EPM: Chs X

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EPM Chs X XI

• Pete Mandik
• Chairman, Department of Philosophy
• Coordinator, Cognitive Science Laboratory
• William Paterson University, New Jersey USA

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Ch X PRIVATE EPISODES THE PROBLEM

• Let us now return, after a long absence, to the
  problem of how the similarity among the
  experiences of seeing that an object over there
  is red, its looking to one that an object over
  there is red (when in point of fact it is not
  red) and its looking to one as though there were
  a red object over there (when in fact there is
  nothing over there at all) is to be understood.
  Part of this similarity, we saw, consists in the
  fact that they all involve the idea -- the
  proposition, if you please -- that the object
  over there is red. But over and above this there
  is, of course, the aspect which many philosophers
  have attempted to clarify by the notion of
  impressions or immediate experience. (p. 85)

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Two possible explanations the similarity between
different kinds of experience

• Either impressions are (a) posited or (b) given.
  (p. 86).
• Sellars arguments so far have been primarily an
  attack on the given, and the main faults of the
  given are summarized on pp. 86-87.

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Pp 86-87 key points

1. We describe impressions by words like red
2. Physical objects alone can be literally red
3. Red impression then seems to mean impression
   the sort of which is common to experiences that
   nonetheless differ in such-and such respects
4. If thats what impression talk amounts to, then
   it is a code for the thing to be explained, not
   an explanation of it.
5. Since we are not born with knowledge of physical
   objects and their properties, it is puzzling how
   we could come to know of impressions at all

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The failure of The Myth of the Given leaves us
with this problem

• the general problem of understanding how there
  can be inner episodes -- episodes, that is, which
  somehow combine privacy, in that each of us has
  privileged access to his own, with
  intersubjectivity, in that each of us can, in
  principle, know about the other's. p. 87

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In subsequent chapters

• Sellars will show how this problem can be solved
  by showing that the two main kinds of mental
  episodes--thoughts and impressions--are, instead
  of being given, actually theoretical posits.

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Ch XI THOUGHTS THE CLASSICAL VIEW

• Recent empiricism (not the Classical View) says
  of thoughts
• They are episodes which are verbal or linguistic
  in character
• Saying that someone has thoughts is really just
  code for saying that they will behave in
  such-and-such manner

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Problems with recent empiricisms view of
thoughts

1. There are more thoughts than can be accounted for
   by overt speech and verbal imagery
2. We explain intelligent behavior by reference to
   thought, therefore reference to thought cannot
   simply be a code for descriptions of intelligent
   behavior

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The Classical Tradition

• In opposition, says
• Thoughts are introspectible inner episodes
  separate from their expression in speech, verbal
  imagery, and intelligent behavior.
• Further, thoughts could not occur without being
  known to occur

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Sellars is cool with 1 but not 2

• That thoughts can only occur when known to occur
  is a confusion borne of, among other things, the
  mistaken view that thoughts belong in the same
  general category as sensations.

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• If we purge the classical tradition of these
  confusions, it becomes the idea that to each of
  us belongs a stream of episodes, not themselves
  immediate experiences, to which we have
  privileged, but by no means either invariable or
  infallible, access. These episodes can occur
  without being "expressed" by overt verbal
  behavior, though verbal behavior is -- in an
  important sense -- their natural fruition. Again,
  we can "hear ourselves think," but the verbal
  imagery which enables us to do this is no more
  the thinking itself than is the overt verbal
  behavior by which it is expressed and
  communicated to others. It is a mistake to
  suppose that we must be having verbal imagery --
  indeed, any imagery -- when we "know what we are
  thinking" -- in short, to suppose that
  "privileged access" must be construed on a
  perceptual or quasi-perceptual model. p. 90

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• THE END